City Year Chicago Associate Board Hosts Successful Soirée

2016-10-04

DJ Shawn Key leads City Year AmeriCorps members in dancing

200 young professionals joined City Year Chicago’s Associate Board to raise funds and awareness about the service of City Year Chicago’s AmeriCorps members and celebrate the back-to-school season at Wintrust in Chicago’s Loop on Friday, September 23, 2016.

The Back to School Soirée highlights the service of City Year Chicago’s AmeriCorps members who serve in schools to keep students in school and on track to succeed, ready for college and career success. Attendees were able to experience first hand accounts from the City Year members who serve full-time across Chicago, providing interventions in attendance, behavior and course performance in math and English to students in 26 Chicago schools.

DJ Shawn Key and DoItAll Entertainment

“Our students face a number of different challenges coming to school. Through the course of the last couple of year, we have achieved some pretty remarkable results,” said Michael Abello, Principal at Piccolo School of Excellence, a City Year school partner. “City Year plays a huge part in that . . . they work with our most at-risk students. Our largest gains came from classrooms where City Year Corps members were working and those students that corps members were working with!”

The $35,000 raised from the Back to School Soirée benefit the programs of City Year Chicago. Currently in Chicago, 230 City Year AmeriCorps members serve in 26 Chicago Public Schools to provide support to students. Working side-by-side with teachers, corps members use research-based tools to improve students’ attendance, behavior and course performance in math and English. Corps members also lead afterschool programs and school-wide initiatives to improve school culture.